Comments:Basically a Turk.-Tung. isogloss; the Kor. word may belong here if it is not derived from ptɨ́- 'to float' (q. v.). If the parallel is correct, then most TM languages have a secondary shift u > e after a labial (a very frequent phenomenon there).

Comments:Medial *-j- is reconstructed to account for the loss of *-ĺ- in Korean. Phonetically a good match would be PJ *bǝsa-na- 'small, young (of children)', but the semantics raises some doubt here. Ramstedt (SKE 186) compares Turk. boš with Mong. bulgu 'free, broad' > Kirgh. buluk- 'to try to free smb.'; but we have not found either word in accessible sources.

Comments:Street 1980, 287 compares the PT form with Mong. bolba-sun 'trained, educated, mature' (possibly also related as a suffixed form). Medial *-j- should be reconstructed to account for loss of *-ĺ- in Korean.

Comments:Originally we related to this root Mong. beile 'prince of the 3d rank' which is usually considered to be borrowed from Manchu beile id. (cf. also Mong. beise = Man. beise 'prince of the 4th rank'). Both words are rather loans from some third language, perhaps Kitan (and cf. also the Old Bulgarian rank bojla) and may be ultimately related to PT *beg which itself is either < Chinese or < Iranian (see Шервашидзе 1989); but Mong. boji 'care' seems to be a more satisfactory comparison. Both semantically and phonetically the etymology seems quite plausible (except perhaps for the variant -i- vowel in Old Japanese, possibly conditioned by the following -j-).

Comments:KW 28, Дыбо 5, Лексика 231-232. In Mong. the vocalism was influenced by a similar root (Mong. *bakaɣu, *bakalaɣur < *pŭ́k`a q. v.); a remnant of the original root vocalism may be seen in WMong. boɣaɣu 'crop, goitre' (coexisting with baqaɣu) - however, the latter form may as well be a Turkism < Turk. *bokak.

Comments:The meaning in Jpn. ('hare') is probably a result of contamination with *t`ŏ̀gsu-k`V 'hare' (which should have normally yielded PJ *tusaki); this could also explain the tonal discrepancy between Jpn. and Kor. Korean, as in several other cases, has a loss *b- > *0-; cf. Old Koguryo *wus(i)kam 'rabbit' (see Miller 1979, 10). All languages reflect a trisyllabic form *borso-k`V, with an original diminutive suffix. Loss of -s- in Mong. is somewhat strange; cf. perhaps alternatively TM *barka-na 'bear's cub' > Evk. barka-na, barka-čan, Neg. bajkana, Ud. bakana (ТМС 1, 75).

Comments:EAS 58, KW 54, Poppe 58, 59 (Turk.-Mong.). A Western isogloss. The root is quite well attested in Turkic and borrowing is highly improbable, so Doerfer's (TMN 1, 229) skepticism seems ungrounded. A slight problem is the variation of *-k- and *-g- in Turkic, probably assimilative in this case (*bök- should be the original variant).